


Feral

by DreamerCynist



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cannibalism, Descent into Madness, Dog Jokes, Fiction, Gen, Horror, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Literature, Serial Killers, Short Stories, Solitude, Starvation, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 08:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5157521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerCynist/pseuds/DreamerCynist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How long can a man go on before he starts to snap?  This is a tale of being betrayed by a loved one, the line between the human and the primal and crap dog food.  Enjoy, my dears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feral

Feral

by

Georgina M. Coates

 

He still couldn't believe that his wife had abandoned him.  For many years, ever since that magical moment during bonfire night, the two of them had been madly in love and in many ways were like a story book couple brought to life.  He had stood with her throughout all the milestones in their lives:  marriage, buying their first house, having children, her illness.  No matter what happened, he was always there for her and he was willing to stand by her no matter what.  He had stood by her side no matter what and he thought that she loved him enough to do the same.  That's what he gets for hoping.

 

One day, she up and left him.  She left him for a tall, blond and strikingly handsome man that represented everything he wasn't and could only hope to be.  After all they had been through, she just went and took a machete to his heart, like it was a slice of butcher's meat or a vine in a jungle.  What's more, she also went and took everything else that was of value to him.  The beautiful children, the tiny black dog, all of the money and most of the food and many of the statues that he had spent many a long night working on.  She and her beau took it all with them, leaving the broken fool alone.

 

As you can imagine, the man did not handle any of this all that well.  He lost all hope and before long lost the will to go to work, to leave his house for anything other than emptying the bins out (and even that didn't last long), to contact his associates beyond updating his Facebook status and on some days he could scarcely muster the energy to shave or shower.  Not helping matters were the facts that the only food that was in the house were a few tins of dog food (Beef-flavoured dog food) and few of his friends made an effort to contact him or offer some kind of help.

 

Many days, the man would just lock himself inside his bedroom and bemoan the wrong turn over a cliff that his life had taken.

 

_What have I done to deserve this?  I thought we had loved each other. 'Till death do us part.  There must have been a sign that my old life would go down hill.  I loved her, I need her, I hope I never see her again.  I miss Steven, Martin, my dear monster Nessie and the little wolf more than I say or think.  Need to eat something, anything.  Heaven please, just give me one tiny scrap of food and I'll be eternally grateful._

~~~~~~~

One day, whilst he was suffering a particularly strong bout of melancholy, the man noticed one of his neighbours walking past his living room window.  The neighbour had short dark hair and eyes like that of a deer.  He was so large (both in girth and in height) that it was like someone had attached four massive logs to a yoga ball.  The rotund neighbour was a quiet fellow, pleasant in demeanour and willing to help out his neighbours whenever he could but generally the sort of person who would much rather keep to himself.  

 

The man stood at the window watching the larger male, his eyes following his neighbour's every move.  Spending so much time in isolation and going so long without food in his belly had taken a toll on his psyche.  Amongst other things, he had grown territorial of his dwellings and suspicious of the people that lived on the street with him.  He did not want the fat man to stick around for any longer than he already had, he just wanted the bloated pest to leave as fast as those pillars he called 'legs' could carry him.  Indeed it would only take one trigger, one more straw on top of a camel's back for the man to snap.

 

That trigger came when the fat fellow reached into his brown leather bag, pulled out a can of Iron Bru and after draining the metal can of all its contents, threw it on the ground without a care in the world.

 

What happened next occurred so quickly that the man barely registered it.  A feral rage overtook his mind and body as he grabbed a nearby statue of a wolf from a bookshelf and threw it through the window directly at the heavy neighbour's head.

 

He fell to the ground with a thud.

 

As quickly as it left him, the man's reason and composure returned to him.  For several minutes, he stood and stared in shock at the corpse of his neighbour, the small statue embedded in his skull, shattered glass surrounding his corpulent body and blood pooling around his head.  Though his man was not a perfectly pure paragon, he tried throughout his life to avoid violence and had never thought that he would be capable of such brutality.  He opened the front door and ventured outside for what felt like the first time in a decade.  The rays of the sun nearly blinded him and he had to shield them with both of his hands.

 

Quickly, he walked over to the where the corpse of his neighbour lied.  The man couldn't help but notice that a few drops of the man's blood had landed on the plants that surrounded his house and had stained several of the white daisies.  Indeed, much of the neglected greenery had grown wild and unkempt and ivy in abundance was climbing up the red brick walls, as if nature in itself was fighting to reclaim the building along with everything in it.

 

His first intention was to drag the massive body round to the back garden, to dig a massive hole in the ground and bury what was once one of his neighbours, to clean up the blood and glass before anyone could notice and carry on with his life.  But intentions don't always matter in the grand scheme of things, as before the man could do anything, he caught sight of the blood pooling on the ground.  It called out to him, like a siren.

 

Cautiously, he knelt down and dipped his fingers (that now were thin, coated in grime and had long, chipped fingernails) into the blood.  He stared at this hands for a moment before licking the blood.

 

It was sweeter than the purest nectar.

~~~~~~~

Over the next few months later, a string of murders took place in Sheffield.  Though getting an exact body count down was far easier said than done, the general consensus put it somewhere in the double digits.  What was particularly horrifying was the state the bodies were in once they were found; covered in the victim's own blood and with the flesh torn to pieces and ripped from the body, as if attacked by some wild, savage animal.  The only pact left intact was the victim's face, wide-eyed and forever frozen in fear.  Eventually, a curfew was in effect and no one was allowed out past dark until whatever was behind the murders was dealt with.

 

No one in Sheffield had a clear idea as to what was responsible for the death toll, but those lucky few that were out by the time the sky had turned pitch black and had managed to return home with their lives had reported seeing a feral creature, its jagged claws on spindly fingers and long, matted hair caked in blood and bits of flesh.  But what may have thing the most unnerving thing about the beast was the faint resemblance that it bore to a human being.

 

The End


End file.
